THE STORY OF BOXERS AND APRONS

It’s funny how taking on a new interest, a new hobby or a new activity opens doors to new and unexpected opportunities.

As the recession took hold of the economy people turned to preparing and cooking at home. Learning to cook, saving money, eating healthier all turned into a new lifestyle. A lifestyle of looking towards the future while going back to the basics. Even as the economy improves this food trend is going strong, reaching a 20 year high.

Stone is standing in the middle of a hot, very dry and neglected garden. Holding a sprouting Green String Bean in a reused StarBuck coffee cup filled with Vermicompost, looking down at a hole dug in the sand and more than a little amazed to be right here and right now.
His intention was never a lush productive garden, a little Garden Of Eden, that he is day dreaming of. In fact he had no intentions, it all sort of just happened, one step at a time. It all just happened.

How he got here didn’t have anything thing to do with a garden, or even with the yard, it all started in a most unlikely of places, the kitchen.
One day a life changing experience paid him a visit, and just like that his years of eating out ended. No more late night take-outs.
As if faith intervened, for whatever reasons faith intervenes, from now on it was going to be nothing but home-cooked meals. Faced with only one choice, he did what he had to do. He began teaching himself how to cook.

I LOVE YOU, NOW GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN! One thing about cooking is there is always scrape pieces of vegetables, a whole heck of a lot of scrapes depending on what is made and it all goes down the garbage disposal.

Waste isn’t waste until it wasted. So he stopped wasting. Instead he began learning about making compost, looking for a easy method, a method that works well for him.

COMPOSTING
He came up with, to him, is an ingenious method. It’s so neat and easy to use and can be placed any where, even the side of the house. It’s not expensive as store bought tumblers or ugly as wooden pallet stacked together and it’s the perfect size.

Its Rubber Maid Plastic Trash Containers, with ventilation holes drilled on the side and on the bottom for drainage. But the best part of all is that it works well, it creates the perfect conditions for worms.

One day he noticed a worm, one single lonely worm. Then there were more, 20, 40, 60, then hundreds. In no time at all there were more worms than could be counted.

WORM FARMING
Just like that he had a working Worm Farm! The conditions were ideal for worms, worms couldn’t stay away. They thrived, expanded, all he had to do was keep it moist and he had a steady supplying Vermicompost! Nature’s potent fertilizer.

Standing there in the hot dry neglected garden, he turned, looking up to admired the fruit tree that until dried out branches, only a few dozen leaves and barely living.
It is such a thrill to know that one day soon this fruit tree will be bearing fruits again.

There is coming a day that this neglect garden will be lust, green and thriving, a productive garden like it never was, a Garden Of Eden.

Standing there, smiling, as he was struck with this thought, realizing that he was about to complete a Food Cycle, “From the kitchen to the garden and back into the kitchen again”.  And That’s Living Green!

Global Warming/ Global Climate Change/ Climate Disruption/ Whatever catch phrase Al Gore is using now

by Nilore Vagan on Apr.23, 2011,

http://fightglobalwarming.com/

Corruption at its best.

They take a few simple truths (like “Carbon Dioxide helps trap heat” and “Man-made machines produce Carbon Dioxide”), then twist it around to fit their needs. After sitting you down and trying to make you feel guilty for causing global warming, they offer you to buy ‘offsets’ as if such a thing would fix the problem. I pretty much stopped reading their site when they went ahead and said that “There is no debate on global warming; all scientists agree that the earth is warming up and agree that it’s man-made.” That’s not true; there’s quite a bit of debate about it, and nearly every scientist so far that says inconclusively that it’s strictly man-made, has been bought by some money-grabbing schemer who wants to make a profit off the whole ordeal. Use cleaner energy, cut back on gas use, sure, fine, that’s all great; but I’m not giving a cent to anyone for ‘offsets.’

These guys completely ignore that there have been forests who have been FLOURISHING because of carbon dioxide (after all, it’s what plants breath), they ignore that several of the glaciers that are melting are exposing ancient civilizations (Had to have been warm there at one point, if that’s the case), they say that “There’s more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than in the past 600,000 years!” … well, what about before then? They then go “Well yeah, it’s been warmer in the past, but it’s not like we were around then to record it, so we don’t really know.”

WHAT ABOUT YOUR 600,000 YEAR CARBON DIOXIDE CALCULATION? Was that just a guess, then?

These are probably the same people who whine and cry when the hole in the Ozone layer starts to heal because “Now there’s too much Ozone in the atmosphere!”

They completely ignore that other planets are warming up, too (The Sun is a tad more actively lately, part of the whole cycle thing, you know? Did you know that they claim the cycle is a myth?).

I’m not going to argue against cutting back on pollution. I’m not gonna argue that we produce carbon dioxide. What I’m arguing against is “All our weather problems are all your fault, so give us money and we’ll fix it!”

 

Who cares about the Forest?

by Franke James

“Who cares about the Forest?”  is the question author/artist Franke James’ explores in her creative personal story for the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada. Franke is the author of Bothered By My Green Conscience which merges science, art and storytelling to inspire people to take action and “do the hardest thing first” for the planet.

The visual essay is below. You can also watch it as an animated video.

Credits:

Who cares about the Forest? © 2011 Franke James

Special thanks to the Forest Stewardship Council Canada for sponsoring this story.

And sincere appreciation to the following people and organizations for their contribution to the story:

Russell Diabo, Algonquin of Barriere Lake; Michelle White, Chapters Indigo; Drew Tremblay, Domtar; Richard Brooks,Greenpeace Canada; Peter Street, Nipissing Forest Resource Management; Roy Summers, Local Activist, North Bay Area; Eric Paradis, RONA; Nicolas Lecomte, FSC Auditor, SmartWood; Karen Whistler-Clark, TD Bank Financial Group; Chris McDonell, Elaine Marchand, Patrick Garneau, Tembec; Warren Spitz, Upper Canada Forest Products; Chief Harry St. Denis, Wolf Lake First Nations; Monte Hummel, WWF-Canada;

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Photographs, illustrations and writing by Franke James, except as noted:

“The Boreal Forest is Our Tap” illustration by Franke James, features a photo © D. Langhorst, Ducks Unlimited, from “A Forest of Blue” Pew Environment Group

The World’s Biggest Carbon Bank illustration by Franke James, features a Boreal wetlands photo © Chad Delany, from “A Forest of Blue” Pew Environment Group

Caribou photo © Valerie Courtois, from “A Forest of Blue” Pew Environment Group

“Lungs of the Planet” illustration by Franke James uses a source image © istockphotos; Owl and Snail illustrations use source photos © istockphotos.

Additional photos from FSC-Canada archive.

Featured books:
The Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter, published in 1909 by F. Warne & Co.
Bothered by My Green Conscience by Franke James, published by New Society Publishers

Research and Resources:

A Forest of Blue: Canada’s Boreal Forest, the World’s Waterkeeper Pew Environment Group

The Boreal Forest Adventure: Cooking Like Mother Nature by Nicolas Lecomte, Biol., PhD (Mother Nature’s Recipes available as a download.)

Turning Up the Heat: Global Warming and the Degradation of Canada’s Boreal Forest, by Christy Ferguson, Elizabeth A. Nelson and Geoff G. Sherman; Greenpeace Canada, March 2008

“The Forest Stewardship Council is the only certification system currently supported by Greenpeace. Products or pulp certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) have been given an environmental stamp of approval. The FSC certification system, which involves a third party audit of forest operations, is the only guarantee of sustainably managed forests.”

Produced by The James Gang,FSC®-CAN-0031, for FSC Canada

 

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Credits:
Who cares about the Forest? © 2011 Franke James

Special thanks to the Forest Stewardship Council Canada for sponsoring this story.

And sincere appreciation to the following people and organizations for their contribution to the story:

Russell Diabo, Algonquin of Barriere Lake; Michelle White, Chapters Indigo; Drew Tremblay, Domtar; Richard Brooks, Greenpeace Canada; Peter Street, Nipissing Forest Resource Management; Roy Summers, Local Activist, North Bay Area; Eric Paradis, RONA; Nicolas Lecomte, FSC Auditor, SmartWood; Karen Whistler-Clark, TD Bank Financial Group; Chris McDonell, Elaine Marchand, Patrick Garneau, Tembec; Warren Spitz, Upper Canada Forest Products; Chief Harry St. Denis, Wolf Lake First Nations; Monte Hummel, WWF-Canada;

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Photographs, illustrations and writing by Franke James, except as noted:

“The Boreal Forest is Our Tap” illustration by Franke James, features a photo © D. Langhorst, Ducks Unlimited, from “A Forest of Blue” Pew Environment Group

The World’s Biggest Carbon Bank illustration by Franke James, features a Boreal wetlands photo © Chad Delany, from “A Forest of Blue” Pew Environment Group

Caribou photo © Valerie Courtois, from “A Forest of Blue” Pew Environment Group

“Lungs of the Planet” illustration by Franke James uses a source image © istockphotos; Owl and Snail illustrations use source photos © istockphotos.

Additional photos from FSC-Canada archive.

Featured books:
The Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter, published in 1909 by F. Warne & Co.
Bothered by My Green Conscience by Franke James, published by New Society Publishers

Research and Resources:
A Forest of Blue: Canada’s Boreal Forest, the World’s Waterkeeper Pew Environment Group

The Boreal Forest Adventure: Cooking Like Mother Nature by Nicolas Lecomte, Biol., PhD (Mother Nature’s Recipes available as a download.)

Turning Up the Heat: Global Warming and the Degradation of Canada’s Boreal Forest, by Christy Ferguson, Elizabeth A. Nelson and Geoff G. Sherman; Greenpeace Canada, March 2008

“The Forest Stewardship Council is the only certification system currently supported by Greenpeace. Products or pulp certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) have been given an environmental stamp of approval. The FSC certification system, which involves a third party audit of forest operations, is the only guarantee of sustainably managed forests.”

Produced by The James Gang,FSC®-CAN-0031, for FSC Canada

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 18th, 2011 at 10:35 am and is filed under environment, My Green Conscience, Visual Essay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

EPOCH; A NEW BEGINNING

Image via Wikipedia

A CHANGE IS TAKING HOLD
All around, change is happening. The human conscious spirit is doing what it does best, massing together.

Change, it never occurs in one big step. The world does not go to sleep one night worried and then awake all cheery and carefree to blue skies the next day. Small steps, one after another, that’s how change happens.

So are you sitting on the fence? Just sitting there with eyes closed, not paying any attention, unaware and oblivious as a stick in the mud.
The Indomitable human spirit, we all heard of it before, well now we are seeing it in action.

STAND UP AND CHEER FOR ZIPLOC
I can’t imagine there is a kitchen without it, Ziploc plastic bags. It’s not fancy, it’s not flashy but it is practical. It’s one of the world’s most recognizable brands of plastic bags.
Ziploc has teamed up with Recyclebank, to make a change. The goal for Ziploc is to — one day create zero waste. They are starting it off with collecting and recycling ONE MILLION pounds of plastic, within this year.
With all the bad publicity big corporations get, SC Johnson (the parent company of Ziploc) has to be admired for recognizing that they too need to be a responsible citizen and clean up the mess they produce.
Now I can feel even better using their product. I totally support their cause, and I will buy and use their brand with even more enjoyment. I am their loyal customer!

TAKE THE CHALLENGE
Do a Google search “the biggest supermarket chain in Hawaii” and you find “Foodland Ltd, the oldest and family owned” in of all places … Wikipedia.
I shop there almost every day, I like it there. Friendly serve is alive and well there. I know that I can ask anyone of them any question I may have, at any time.
The latest Foodland drive slogan is “Take The Challenge”. The goal is to collect 25 MILLION plastic bags, kept it out of the landfills, recycled, and to change their customers attitude towards the use of plastics bags and to use reusable grocery bags.

“Take the Challenge” is a good slogan, but it’s not what people want to see or read, not now. “Take the Challenge” sounds so old, so passé. Now, people are ready for a change! They are eager and hoping for a change.
Green is the new black and people understand we need more of a sustainable lifestyle. People want to save the planet and 25 MILLION is a fantastic number!
So, to you Jeni Walls (the CEO of Foodland) — as a customer, your loyal customer, I just want you to know that this is a message that’s easier and instantaneously understandable. It’s green.
So scream and shout, be loud, be clear. Be green and we’ll be green right there along with you!

Share this message and I’ll stand with you — proud.
A new epoch is here, a tipping point reached. It’s a beginning of a new and exciting time in our history, a green evolution, one giant leap forward for mankind.
This is change, real change. This is the kind of change people want to know is happening, happening right now!

So what are you doing for a greener planet?

Earth Day/4-22-11

“A Billion Acts of Green” is a registered trademark based on millions of personal pledges to live and act more sustainably.

This campaign is all about rewarding and inspiring people to help achieve the goal of reducing the global carbon footprint, while registering 1 billion actions prior to the Earth Summit in Rio in 2012. http://act.earthday.org/

“A Billion Acts of Green® demonstrates the kind of environmental impact that can be made when millions of people, corporations and organizations make commitments, both small and large, to better their environment” (Earth Day Network).

 

 

 

Fall Out Of Bed lands You In The Kitchen!

Fall out of bed and landed in the kitchen!

Standing in the doorway to a bedroom, which by all rights should be comforting and welcoming, instead feels opulent and cavernous. Tentatively she moves to the center, better take in the décor and a bed looking big enough for few.

Curiously about the closet of the elite she opens the double doors and there is a rack the stretched out left to right, seemingly like a long way.  She can’t imagine the person who spends their nights here.

Stepping into the close and closing the doors, she curls up in the corner, on the floor and sleeps.

In the bedroom of her childhood.

To fall out of the bed and land in the kitchen, that is one small house! But think about it, the up side is with just one light bulb you can light up the whole space. You can warm up the place with a candle. Cool off the room with a block of ice. And that is a good thing, much smaller carbon foot print.

I don’t know how she does it, but she is happy and that all the really matter, isn’t it? Check out her video, I think you’ll be amazed.  Simple life Manhattan: a 90-square-foot microstudio

I really do applaud this girl, sleeping in a bedroom so small that the ceiling is inches from her face, I can see how her 17 x 17 feet childhood bedroom would seem cavernous. Sailors call it a berth, don’t they?

Well as for me, I’ll find other ways to reduce my carbon foot print.  I rather inhale cow methane in the weekends than live in a space so small. But I do applaud what she is doing.

Two Massive Water Pumps Truck Will Be Entombed In Japanese Reactors

Hearing “Nuclear Energy is Cheap and Green Energy” always made me cringe. I never understood how anyone could say it with a straight face.

There are only three Water Pump Trucks big enough, able to pump enough water, and with a extendable boom that can reach the spent nuclear rod cooling ponds at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

Only three! And TWO are going to Japan! These trucks are so huge, 190,000 pounds, 26 wheels each,that specialized Russian cargo planes are needed to fly these Pump Tucks to Japan.

Only three of these Pump Trucks exist in the world, and these two had to be retrofitted to pump water along with concrete which it was originally designed for.

The truck will be operated, remotely, from two miles away. And once done these pump trucks will be entombed along with the Nuclear Reactor in concrete, too contaminated to ever be use again.

These Pump truck are highly specialized for the concrete work it does. And now there is only ONE left in the world!

Now this is where they lose me, I don’t’ gets it. With all the millions tons of water they already pumped into the cool pond to prevent a Nuclear Melt-Down and with all the additional tons of water coming from these two trucks, super heated radioactive water, how can they say that ocean safe!

How in the world can a sane mind say “Everything on land is contaminated! But don’t worry, the Ocean is SAFE.

Even an elementary school kid would go, “Huh?!” Wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t she?

Google Earth, which by the way covered Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant site with little grey boxes, shows the location right off of the shoreline. Go look for yourself.

So Millions of gallons of Super Heated Radioactive Water going right into the ocean! All those poor little crabs, all those poor little fishes, all those poor coral life, all those poor everything else living along the shoreline and in the waters, the beaches miles up and down the shoreline, everything contaminated, one

Unimaginablely Huge DEAD ZONE!

Wait, like Bat Man’s nemesis, it’s not done yet! All this radioactive water, life killing water will be carried with the ocean currents streams, for hundreds and thousands of miles, traveling the whole Pacific Ocean and eventually that Atlantic.

So what is this going to do the fishing industry? The whole world’s fishing industry?

To me, they are saying The Ocean Waters Is SAFE only because what else can they say! “Oh shit! We’re FUCK NOW!”

Nuclear Energy is cheap and GREEN Energy. “REALLY?!”

LAZY MAN’S WAY TO LIVING GREEN

If It’s Not Convenient Why Do it?!

What does green mean to you? What is a Green lifestyle? Your carbon foot step, do you even have the vaguest idea what to do about it?

For me going Green is all about small steps. It was all about convenes, making chores easier to do, because I am Lazy! And that is the truth.

I am lazy, so I would let the grass grow, till it was long, high, high enough I would lose that the family foot tall dog! Quail would nest in there. I know it’s extreme, but to my credit, not a single weed! That you could see anyway.

This is the problem I was trying to solve, the trash is picked up twice a week and it would take me two weeks to get rid of all the grass. So the mountain of plastic bags filled with grass sit there, and I hated that.

That is how composting started, not very successful at the start. I had no idea that a pile of just grass would turn into a better nesting site for centipedes and actually break down without tur

ning into a big clump of mushy, smell green stuff!  But I learned. I am not the most intelligent so it took a while.

Now I reached the level of worm composting, from cutting grass, to learning to make compost, to getting confident about making compost, and to finding a few worms in the compost, to raising as much worms as I can.

Yeah, yeah, it’s not all that impressive, I know. Again, none of this was planned, it all just happened and I just went with it.

“Hmm, look a worm! I wonder where it came from,

I wonder why it’s in the compost, Will more show up?”

So that’s how and why I got where I am, because I am lazy. I’ll cut the grass, clean the garden but it was too much work throwing the trash away! Worms? Just leave it, see what happens.

My neighbor must think I am NUTS! The way I make compost is a bit asinine, and I really don’t mind putting in the effort, because it works and works fast. In about a month I have compost.

I am living just a bit Greener, my carbon foot step is just a bit smaller, I am that much closer living a green lifestyle. Not that it’s the main goal. I am lazy!

United States Nuclear Energy Implodes

Did you hear about Unites States Nuclear Energy’s implosion? No, no not explosion. It just self-destructed, financially. Faster than a major current of nuclear fall out reaches the United States the Stock Markets are pulling out.  Finally!  It’s meeting the same faith as the buggy whip. Ka boom!

How could anyone, much less the government, claim of how cheap and clean nuclear energy is I never could understand. Even after both 3 Mile Island and the Chernobyl disasters still more nuclear plants were built, so now what will they do with all the nuclear waste just sitting around at each plant.  It’s never mentioned, not even once, like it is part of a PR campaign of damage control is going on.  It’s scary, it’s more likely that there isn’t a realistic, feasible plan in place. Do they really think that there is no chance, not even a iota of a chance that those water containment tanks holding the spent fuel rods won’t break.  It’s another disaster just waiting to happen.  When it happens and if you live in the vicinity you better run.

Now what do we do with all the tons of stock piled nuclear waste!

Is there a lot more fallout coming our way? How forth coming has both the Japanese and US Governments been?  Both hasn’t been very informative in the past. I wonder just how close to a run- away nuclear melt-down are those plants?

We don’t need to stock pile our own supply of iodine, that the Presidential advisement, but who can forget the duct tape incident. Seal up your windows with duct tape and stay inside?!  It reminds one of “duck under your desk” they used to teach school children.  Who can blame anyone for stock piling iodine?

Good Riddance to the Nuclear Industry!  Bye and take your waste with you!

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